


going home

by blue-plums (arabesque05)



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2019-09-15 23:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16942824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabesque05/pseuds/blue-plums
Summary: sasuke has taken to telling her “sorry, next time”, like some scum-bag debt-ridden parolee trying to weasel his way out of trouble.





	going home

 

Sasuke has taken to telling her “Sorry, next time”, like some scum-bag debt-ridden parolee trying to weasel his way out of trouble. Either that, or he’s seeing someone else on the side.

Sasuke considers these two options thoughtfully. “I am a parolee,” he points out. “I am not seeing anyone else on the side.”

“How would I know,” sneers Sakura, and then reaches across the breakfast table for Sasuke’s juice. She takes a spitefully long drink.

“The lady who sells mackerels at the market almost spat in my face yesterday,” says Sasuke. “I saw her forming the spit wad in her mouth.”

Sakura looks at him for several moments. Sasuke is exactly this sort of terrible and incompetent when he tries to comfort someone. Sakura despairs because she finds it charming.

He continues, “So, I don’t think you have to worry. No one else would have me.”

“Wow,” says Sakura. “That really makes me feel good.”

“It shouldn’t,” says Sasuke, terrible and incompetent and tone-deaf. “You have a garbage boyfriend, is what you have.”

* * *

Ten years ago, if anyone had told Sakura that one day Sasuke would refer to himself as a “garbage boyfriend”, Sakura—well, Sakura would probably have punched their face in, for daring to link “Sasuke-kun” and “garbage” in the same sentence.

These days, Sakura has mostly given up being surprised by Sasuke’s moments of depressingly frank self-assessments. On some level, she should have expected it. Sasuke is not the most self-aware person in terms of what he wants and what would make him happy; but he’s always been clear-eyed about his own ability. Getting him to admit to being a boyfriend was difficult; having him admit that he is terrible at most boyfriendly things is ridiculously easy. Unprompted, even.

* * *

Things Sasuke is terrible at:

  * planning dates
  * remembering to show up for dates
  * going on dates
  * dates



* * *

“—I watched it all by myself, and I’m not sorry. You missed out on a marvel of cinematic achievement, you asshole. Did you sleep all day?”

“I lost a lot of blood last week,” says Sasuke, from under a pile of blankets on the couch.

Sakura throws a sock at his head. “Liar! I ordered your blood transfusions myself! You were well within your normal blood-loss range.”

“Ah,” says Sasuke, sounding caught.

“ _Ah_ , he says,” mutters Sakura, and then gets up from the floor to fetch the sock she had thrown at Sasuke’s head. There’s a hole in the heel she needs to darn. Sasuke looks up at her from under his blankets. “Thread the needle for me,” mumbles Sakura, faltering in her anger. Sasuke in domestic moments is a lethal thing.

He reaches for the needle and thread. There’s a flash of red in his eyes as he pushes the thread through the eyehole of the needle. “I did sleep all day,” admits Sasuke, and passes the needle back to her. “The blankets smell like you.” Then he adds, devastatingly, “I didn’t want to leave.”

“ _I_  smell like me! Come to the movies with me next time!” snaps Sakura—but it’s a lost cause. She never stays angry at Sasuke like this, when he’s home and safe and sleepy.

“Hmm,” says Sasuke. He smiles at her, boyish and young. “You should stay in bed with me next time.”

* * *

Things Sasuke is excellent at:

  * weaseling his way to forgiveness with nary an apology.



* * *

“I’ll stowaway in one of your bags on your next trip,” threatens Sakura. She waves the garden shears at him menacingly.

“I’ll notice,” he replies, up to his elbows in loam and tomato seedlings. Absently, he says, “You’re kind of heavy, Sakura.”

“Never mind,” says Sakura. “I’ll just kill you in your sleep. Then neither one of us gets to go on trips.”

Sasuke sits back on his heels and peers up at her. He looks perplexed. “They’re really boring, the trips.”

Sakura snips away at her peony plants. “You say that because you’ve been on a lot of them.”

“Everywhere looks like everywhere else,” he says. “It’s all just roads and unpleasant weather and cold food. It’s not like here.” He looks around at their little garden, the neat rows of summer squash and pumpkins, their vines curling around wooden support stakes in the ground. Sakura’s peonies are just starting to bloom, the blushing flowerheads nodding gently in the breeze. Sasuke says, almost haplessly, “I like…here.”

Sakura forgets sometimes that Sasuke had been effectively homeless for at least three years. Road trips and new places are adventuresome and exciting for Sakura, because Sakura has always had somewhere to come home to. Sasuke…

“You’re a homebody,” says Sakura, thickly. She doesn’t cry, but it’s a close thing.

Sasuke’s desires are smaller and simpler. Probably, thinks Sakura, four walls and a roof and hot soup for dinner.

“Well,” says Sasuke, picking up his tomato seedlings again and digging into the loam. He says, “You’re here.”

* * *

One day, when the leaves in the forest start turning color, Sakura takes Sasuke out for a walk. “Let’s go look at the leaves,” she says.

Sasuke does his grumble act, but comes readily enough. His shoulders tense a little when they leave the gates of Konoha—but it isn’t anything more than his usual levels of watchful suspicion. They tramp into the woods: Sakura makes a leaf pile, Sasuke calls her a child, Sakura shoves him face first into the leaf pile. At some point they get lost. They climb a tree and find themselves again. Sakura shows Sasuke the roots of which trees have analgesic properties. He pays rapt attention.

“That was nice,” says Sakura, when they reach the main roads again.

“Hmm?”

Sakura takes his hand in hers and swings their linked arms a little. “I like going places with you,” she tells him. “I like the—the ‘let’s go’ part. I want to keep that feeling of…you know, anticipatory hope. Heading off on an adventure with you.” She looks up at him, twinkling.

“Don’t say it,” he warns her.

Sakura twinkles at him a little more. “The adventure…. _of the rest of our lives_ , ha ha ha!”

Sasuke shoves her shoulder. She shoves back. They stop by the side of the road for an impromptu scuffle. Sakura shoves Sasuke face first into another pile of leaves.

After they sort themselves out again and resume walking on the road, Sasuke takes Sakura’s hand, linking their fingers together again. “I don’t…like going places,” he says, quietly. “….going away. I don’t like it.”

“I know,” says Sakura, squeezing his hand softly.

“I like—” He pauses and looks down at her. There is a look in his eyes, very soft and very warm, like a baby bird. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“Yes,” agrees Sakura. “But say it anyway.”

Sasuke looks up at the darkening sky, the streaks of violet on the horizon. “I like going home,” he says. He tugs her hand a little. It is not quite a smile on his face: quieter, deeper than that; the bruise of a smile.

“Let’s go home,” he tells her.


End file.
